The purpose of this proposal is to evaluate whether a new laboratory method - the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) - substantially increases our ability to detect evidence of exposure to human papillomavirus (HPV) in case- control studies of anogenital cancer. Paraffin-embedded tumor tissues from approximately 580 patients with anogenital cancers will be tested by PCR to detect HPV types 6,11,16,18 and 33. These patients are enrolled in a currently funded population-based, case-control study of the role of HPV infection in anogenital cancer. Both in situ and invasive squamous and transitional cell carcinomas (penile, urethral, and anal in men; and vulvar, vaginal, and cervical in women) will be tested by PCR. The PCR results will be compared with those obtained by in situ hybridization, which is the procedure currently being used to detect evidence of HPV infection in these tissues. The majority of the tissues have already been tested for the presence of human papillomavirus by in situ hybridization. If PCR can be shown to increase our ability to detect HPV infection in humans, the role of this virus and its interaction with other co-factors in the etiology of genital cancer can be more precisely determined.